Roger Scruton Quotes

Civilizations are a matter of the mind.

Culture more than politics determines the success of the society, but politics can save the culture.

Education is the transmission of civilization.

Culture is more important than politics.

The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion.

Generations of tradition and hard work are required to form a nation of traders.

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Having culture means we are the only animal that acquires the rules of its daily living from the accumulated knowledge of our ancestors, rather than from the genes they pass to us.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

Culture is the air we breathe all around us.

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men.

Let us then, dear friends, forever bow down to the general reason of society.

Education is the medium by which a people are prepared for the creation of their own particular civilization, and the advancement and glory of their own race.

Society is one word, but many things.

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

… a country's laws are written upon paper, and that its customs are engraved upon brass. One may play with the one, but not with the other. It is less risky for a stranger to dance upon our Constitution in the public square than to affront one of our solidified customs. The one is merely eminently respectable, the other is sacred.

Culture is more important than politics and government.

Without art, you don't have society. It underpins so much.

Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.

Human beings are a social species. We like to hang together in groups, just like wildebeests, just like lions. Wildebeests don't hang with lions because lions eat wildebeests. Human beings are like that. We do what that group does that we're trying to identify with.

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.

A civilization, a culture, cannot survive without passion, cannot be saved without passion.